Ubuntu/Android

[deebee]

I cannot get livecode to recognize the path to the JDK in the mobile support section of the preferences stack. The release notes say it may have to be manually set for linux, but I don't have an available field in order to set it manually. Using Ubuntu 12.04.

Please advise.

Update:
This seems to have been fixed in the most recent release. No problems now.

[FourthWorld]

I had a similar problem, but managed to work it out. What's the path your JDK, and do you have the emulator working?

[deebee]

The path to the ADK is /home/user/android
The path to the JDK is /home/user/android/jdk1.6.0_35

The emulator is running successfully and the system seems to be using the correct JDK as default.

[mwieder]

I don't have an available field

??? There should be a "..." button next to the path which will allow you to navigate to the proper folder.
Of course, the "proper folder" is left as an exercise for the reader. On my Fedora Core system using openjava I'm using

Android development SDK root:
/home/<user>/android-sdk-linux
JDK path:
/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-openjdk

[deebee]

??? There should be a "..." button next to the path which will allow you to navigate to the proper folder.

Yup, I have that, and it allows me to set the path to the ADK.
But I cannot manually set the path to the JDK, there is no "..." button for the JDK path.

I have had the JDK installed in the same location as your Fedora install, but it did not recognize it there either.

[FourthWorld]

The more time I've spent with the emulator, the more I'm convinced it isn't worth it. It takes forever to load, and runs your programs so slowly that it cannot approximate normal behavior on even the slowest of tablets.

I've found a far simpler, much faster solution: Dropbox.

I build into Dropbox, and download to the device and install from there. Simple, and several orders of magnitude faster than waiting for the emulator.

[mwieder]

Yes, the emulator is a pretty dismal tool.

Back on topic, though, I looked at my various OS implementations and I don't see the "..." button on Windows or OSX. Only on my linux box.
I'm not sure what to make of that, nor of the fact that it doesn't appear on Unbuntu.

[deebee]

Thanks for the help, guys. I'll probably do the dropbox thing for now.

[jacque]

I use Dropbox to transfer Android apps on my Mac too -- the emulator isn't any better there either.

[Bernard]

I use Dropbox to transfer Android apps on my Mac too -- the emulator isn't any better there either.

I guess I'm the only one who uses the Android deployment via USB feature. With that enabled, LiveCode has another option in the "test" menu, which sends the compiled standalone to the Android device. I use it successfully with both a Sony android phone and with a HTC android tablet. Easy peasy. In fact, I've never once had a LiveCode app run inside the emulator, and never even start an emulated image. Considering all the jiggery-pokery going on with LiveCode deploying directly to an android device, I'm pretty damn impressed that the whole thing is so easy (once the Android tools are actually installed/working on the main computer).

Having said that, I've not yet tried to develop on linux for Android. I've mostly done it with a mac, and I think I originally tried with Windows last year some time. I assume the USB deployment option would work for Linux too.

[jacque]

I used to plug my Android into my Mac and do what you do, but it was such a pain that I went to over-the-air instead. That was back when I had a slow, old Android device that was very picky and wouldn't always go into developer mode. It usually required several restarts to kick it into gear and eventually I decided the few seconds it took to move the files over wi-fi was a lot less trouble. I usually just save the file directly to Dropbox, so it's pretty fast. With my newer tablet I do occasionally dig out my data cable and plug in, but mostly I still find wi-fi easier. A direct connection is great for logging and debugging though.

[deebee]

I cannot get livecode to recognize the path to the JDK in the mobile support section of the preferences stack. The release notes say it may have to be manually set for linux, but I don't have an available field in order to set it manually. Using Ubuntu 12.04.

Please advise.

Update:
This seems to have been fixed in the most recent release. No problems now.